It gets dirty: Vázquez Mota pulls out narco card

While I haven't been able to follow the admittedly uninspiring 2012 campaign nearly as closely as I should, given too many projects, it nonetheless seems to me that the campaign took a particular turn for the dirty with the following statement from Josefina Vázquez Mota:

Moreira and the PRI not only betrayed the people by pawning our future with an unpayable debtl they also betrayed Mexicans with their pact with organized crime, being a part of them, looking after the wealth generated by the killing, extorting or poisoning of our children.

Wow.

"Proceso" reporter murdered in Veracruz

Terrible news for investigative reporting in Mexico: Regina Martínez, a veteran reporter of 30 years, and with Proceso the past 10, was found murdered in Veracruz. She is the fourth journalist murdered in the state in the last year and a half.

It has been a while since the recognized news magazine Proceso stopped using the names of reporters in bylines in many narco stories, and the reason is unfortunately very clear: They have now become targets of organized crime.

Peña Nieto's cowardice

It is eminently rational, as Gancho noted, that when you're the 20-point front runner who is moreover prone to disaster in unscripted situations, you might want to limit your appearances as much as you can.

But it is hardly courageous of you. It is cowardice, and it deprives citizens from their democratic right to know and question their candidates.

* Peña Nieto cancels participating in a debate at the radio show of Carmen Aristegui, even though he had, quite stunningly, just this Sunday proclaimed to be the candidate "most interested in contrasting ideas." The train wreck of a PAN candidate, Josefina Vázquez Mota, was hardly any more courageous: She would only participate if Peña Nieto did (!).

* Peña Nieto had just days earlier canceled a promised appearance at the Iberoamericana university planned for today. Don't want to risk any tough questions from those pesky students, do we!
* He also cancelled appearing at a second university, whose name escapes me right now.

All this bodes very ill for the man unfortunately very likely to become Mexico's president: Neither the inept PAN candidate trying to run away from 12 mediocre years in power, or AMLO, who far too late and at least six years late is trying to present a more conciliatory image, is likely to be able to catch up.

But it does not mean it is impossible, even with only 9 weeks left to go.

PAN's narco mayors

While the national PAN at times is appearing to be disintegrating, witnessed both in the mess that is Josefina Vázquez Mota's presidential campaign, and the extremely dirty selection process for its legislative candidates, it also bears noting that since February, two PAN mayors have been arrested for their ties to the narcos and organized crime:

- Mauricio Herrera Fernández, mayor of Las Minas in Verarcruz, was arrested in an army checkpoint in Puebla with guns and drugs on Feb. 27.

On April 18, Martín Padua Zúñiga, also a Veracruz mayor in Chinameca was arrested with members of the Zetas, after a shoot out with the army.

PAN, of course, fully distanced itself from the mayor, claiming he was not even a member of the party, which appears to be a false claim.

It's been a long time since PAN's "clean hands" image was debased, and while this could of course happen in any party, it is notable that both mayors were panistas, especially given Calderón's full frontal assault on the narcos.

AMLO now no. 2

Let the poll speak:

Milenio

Note that this is not a mere single poll. In the ADN Poll of polls, he has as well overtaken the PAN candidate.

Solalinde's life is in danger: Amnesty International

Amnesty International urgently requested from the Mexican government protection for human rights activist Alejandro Solalinde, a very brave catholic priest who has particularly involved himself in the protection of one of the most vulnerable populations in Mexico, Central and South American migrants.

A hit man is reportedly already assigned to assassinate him in Ixtepec, Oaxaca, where he runs a migrant shelter.

This is terrifying stuff: Due to his incessant activism, Solalinde's life now appears in very real danger: Offering police protection should be the very least thing the Mexican government could do to prevent his assassination.

Ebrard and Calderón on Argentina's nationalization

It appeared perhaps rather odd that president Calderón would offer such strong pronunciations on Argentina's recent nationalization of YPF-Repsol. After all, this is a man who just went to Cuba, where he reversed the "Castañeda doctrine" by offering not a word of criticism of the Cuban dictatorship and its atrocious human rights record. Yet now he saw fit to declare Argentina's decision "irresponsible and irrational."

The human rights of oil company stockholders are worth more than a word of encouragement for human rights in Cuba, it seems. Of course, there's also a direct stake here: PEMEX, Mexico's sclerotic state-owned oil company with, as it were, more restrictions on private capital than even Cuba's national oil company, has a share in Repsol.

Mexico City mayor and hopefully Mexico's next president in 2018, Marcelo Ebrard, instead responded,

we have to respect the decisions made elsewhere.In all of Mexico's history one has done this, in the self-determination of peoples, and if the people of Argentina and its government have made ​​this decision, we must respect it.

And he noted the obvious, of course: Mexico's oil industry is in national hands following its own nationalization in 1938.

Yet that is exactly the point, though: Calderón's party founded PAN the very next year, 1939, as a direct reaction to Cárdenas' progressive policies. And among the parties founders were none other than Luis Calderón Vega. As such, Calderón's criticism of Argentina is absolutely logical.

That doesn't necessarily make it valid.

Calderón's 24 hours in Cuba

Calderón finally went on an official visit to Cuba - finally, as it's long planned and repeatedly postponed - where he met the unelected President Raúl Castro, and notably condemned the U.S. embargo against the island. He did not meet with, it seems, any of the Cuban dissidents to the regime, and as far as official declarations go, nor do any major announcements, agreements, etc appear to have been signed in the short visit (he also went to Haiti).

It wasn't Calderón's first visit to Cuba - he went as PAN president in 1998 - but many thought this official state visit wouldn't come to pass given the not too friendly declarations a few months back from Fidel Castro, who in his infinite wisdom suggested that "the empire didn't let" AMLO win in 2006, meaning that the U.S. somehow rigged the 2006 election. Hence, Calderón was a spurious president. And on this visit, Felipe did not meet Fidel.

Death by surgery

Now this one's fishy: Ana María Zamarripa, a prominent PAN member from Reynosa, Tamaulipas, died under the knife - on the operating table, that is - while undergoing "aesthetic surgery" in a private clinic in Mexico City.

Cause of death: Heart attack.

Yes, the case of Amado Carrillo Fuentes does immediately pop into mind.I hope Zamarripa's doctors will meet a happier fate than those who killed, by accident or design, Carrillo Fuentes in 1997.

One rare smart thing said by Vázquez Mota on the trail

Josefina Vázquez Mota's campaign to me appears a near disaster of poor organizations and erratic statements and behaviors from as much the candidate herself as the campaign staff. She seems to me utterly unprepared for the presidential office, and I truly hope the anti-PRI vote will go to the left instead. For whatever AMLO's faults, he appears a million times better prepared than the PAN candidate.

Yet one thing she does deserve credit for: Calling out the equally unprepared TV-created media phenomenon Enrique Peña Nieto for his constant signing of his "pledges" or "promises" or "compromises" or whatever to Mexican citizens, in front of a public notary.

Disregarding the fact these "compromises" are essentially about small micro projects the federal government is or will fund regardless, Vázquez Mota declared she won't sign anything - voters can take her word for it. Indeed, if EPN needs to sign these promises, what does that say about his commitment to the spoken word? And what about the promises he makes but doesn't sign? Are they effectively mere campaign lies?

AMLO reaches out to the EZLN

On the campaign trail in Chiapas just before the Easter break, AMLO made a call to "the rebels of 1994" to participate in his electoral movement. The plaza reportedly fell completely silent as he touched upon the topic of  EZLN, without mentioning the zapatistas by name.

El Universal's description of it as a call for "reconciliation" is not entirely accurate, as reconciliation must go two ways. AMLO has always reached out to EZLN, but the latter responded, in the parody of leftwing secterianism that if unfortunately descended into behind its messiah-complexed Subcomandante Marcos, with givin the PRD the finger (literally) and denouncing it as worse than PAN and PRI, and, to boot, "fascist" - coincidentally the same term the more reactionary wings of the Mexican Catholic church likes to fling around.

In 2006, EZLN openly campaigned against any participation in the 2006 federal elections. I'm not sure to what extent that struck a blow for anything, let alone against the imperialists.

So for a "reconciliation" to take place, the EZLN would also need to do their part.
Don't expect them to.

A miracle! AMLO moderated through...prayer!

Archbishop of Jalapa, Hipólito Reyes Larios, has a clear answer to AMLO's moderate discourse on the campaign trail: The church prayed for it! That's right, it is obviously a result of the priests and their congregations having prayed for this to happen!

Now what about those pesky amputees...

Recommended Sunday reads on Mexican politics

A cop out due to work overload on other projects: I'll limit myself to recommend three excellent recent reads in English on Mexican politics this Sunday

* Patrick Corcoran on Javier Sicilia and his movement: The best, most succinct analysis I've seen so far.

* The Economist has an excellent election run-down on the candidates for 2012 where it also notes the increasingly dirty politics of PAN with regards to candidate nominations, especially that of  Fernando Larrazabal Bretón in Nuevo León.

* From the left, a wonderful article from Fred Rosen and NACLA on AMLO, entitled No Resentment Here!